1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a still picture recording apparatus and, more particularly, to a still picture recording apparatus to record a still picture using a solid-state image pickup device such as a CCD, BBD, etc. as image pickup means, and to a solid-state image pickup device which is suitable for this apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many still picture recording apparatuses using solid-state image pickup devices have already been proposed.
As an image pickup device applicable to such an apparatus, various such devices including a frame transfer type CCD, an interline type CCD, etc. are known. However, in the case of the frame transfer type CCD, for example, in order to prevent blooming in association with generation of excess charges of a image pickup part or image sensing part in the CCD of this type, it is generally necessary to take countermeasures against the blooming by providing overflow drains between each two columns of an array of radiation sensitive cells arranged in rows and columns constituting the image sensing part, or at least after every n columns, or by other methods. However, in the case where the blooming preventing portions such as the overflow drains or the like are provided between each two columns of an array of radiation sensitive cells or between columns for every nth column as described above, there is a disadvantage that the horizontal (lateral) dimension of the image sensing part increases corresponding to such blooming preventing portions. Or otherwise, to prevent an increase in horizontal dimension, the horizontal dimension of each radiation sensitive cell has to be inevitably reduced; this contrarily causes the radiation receiving area of each radiation sensitive cell to adversely decrease, so that this method is disadvantageous in terms of the S/N ratio of a signal in particular. Therefore, particularly with respect to a solid-state image pickup device of the frame transfer type, it is actually impossible to improve the resolution in the horizontal direction as desired since the number of radiation sensitive cells in the horizontal direction cannot be greatly increased.
On the contrary, if the blooming preventing portions are curtailed or are completely eliminated from the image sensing part the excess charges generated in the image sensing part will flow into the memory part, so that there is a large risk the signal charges which have been formerly temporarily stored in the memory part for readout being disturbed due to such excess charges.
Therefore, for example in the case where such an image pickup device is used for a still picture recording apparatus such as a still video camera, if such excess charges flow from the image sensing part to the memory part as described above during the recording while reading out the stored charges from the memory part, the recording picture image will be largely disturbed, resulting in an unacceptable defect.